They Stole Your Attention

Foobar8568

And the article is skimmed in ... 47 seconds.

rinnetensei

Considering that AI generated content is the new frontier in stealing our attention, this blatantly AI generated article and web design diminished the gravity of your point a little bit.

agos

why should I employ my time reading something the "author" didn't bother writing? my attention has been stolen, sure, but if wrestle it back I'll give it to anything else

datakan

People don't have hobbies anymore. I can probably count on 1 hand the number of people I talk to that actually have a real hobby, something they do in their spare time. Everyone’s just scrolling these days.

eager_learner

it took me 11 seconds to realize it was AI slop.

petesergeant

> meta earned $17 per north american user in 2011 I always find the economics around this annoying. I’d gladly pay $17 a year — hell ten times that — to not see ads on Instagram. However, the fact that I can and would pay for that means that Meta can’t afford to lose me, because it kills the value of their audience.

vitorfblima

If you didn't take your time and effort writing it, why should I bother reading it? I can only assume the "author" is being ironic on purpose, pushing slop claiming that machines are taking my attention.

pringk02

The data seemed like it could be interesting but I found it tough to engage with the “stylish” AI prose and UI flourishes. Is there a human-written long-form article to go with this?

joenot443

Can you share the prompt you used?

wuschel

Upvoted. IMHO quite shocking numbers if you think what it does with society as a whole. There will be a variation in statistical spread in different countries/cultures, I would love to see them. Where do you have the base data from? What is more shocking what this does to people that have never been bored or cut off from media. The pure social media generation so to say. I liked the idea attention measurement clock on the bottom of the page.

kittikitti

Thank you so much for sharing this. Just yesterday, I was doing a thought experiment where I started counting the number of seconds until I get distracted or anxious and wanted to reach for my phone. Unfortunately for me, it was much less than 47 seconds, and on average it was around 20 seconds. This was highly concerning because it was something in the back of my mind that has been there for more than a decade.

themoose8

I'm building an app to help people reclaim their attention, if you are interested in helping beta test please fill in the form ! - coghance.com

bflesch

Amazing! Just disable the animations it makes my system really slow.

rhipitr

Current attention behavior with all of our devices reminds me of the The Box machine in Batman Forever, but way worse as it is perniciously unobvious to most.

wseqyrku

You know, "stealing your attention" is just a socially accepted phrase to mean "wasting your time." Don't waste your time.